The Grotto King

A short story by Andrew Malcolm Steuer

Each step sponges into the muck of accumulated half-decayed lawncare detritus, which gathers in the summertime with each biweekly dumping into the ravine. Coke cans and sickly green plastic bottles litter the earth. The slope is steep, and I grip saplings for balance. On the fourth or fifth careful step of my descent, as I close my fingers around one such flexible sapling stalk—a little poplar’s I believe—the muck gives way. My backside slams onto earth shorn of padding; I slide upon a thin coat of decomposition which slicks the hard-packed clay until I splash into a copper-smelling pool where cool creek water pauses on its journey to the sewers.

Splash!

The foul water sprinkles my face and enters my eyes and nose and mouth. I shake my head and examine my bloodied palms for significant damage. I wipe the blood and water from my hands and mutter a general prayer to the muffled wind: “Please let it be that no significant amount of giardia or e. coli or other such microbial death entered my blood.” I collect saliva in my mouth and spit to expel as much of the copper-tasting water droplets as I can. A ribbitting frog—probably half-turned to hermaphrodism by the water—plops into the pool as the surface settles.

A reflected gray sky roils ominously below the treetops in the pool. Caw-caw, I hear crow calls overhead. I stare down into the churning clouds and wince as a squirt of disinfectant gel burns into the scratches on my palms. My vision ripples with the wakes of passing waterbugs and drifting trash.

I stand; squish—my feet slip upon the soaking soles of my penny-loafers.

From down here, I can barely hear the whoosh and hum of passing traffic. Cars arrive at the shopping center and then depart. So much bustle on the concrete surface. I catch only the brief swell of diffuse shadows on the trees as retail workers pass by on their lunchbreaks. Such shades withdraw back into gray light before I catch their form or hear their words. It’s not so hot down here, but the air is still, which allows an asphalt gasoline acridity to settle down and layer upon the stench of rancid creek water.

These odors fill my mouth with every breath and exacerbate my brief vertigo on standing. I check my phone, and I’ve got twenty-eight minutes. Janice will be pissed if I’m late getting back to the counter at the bank.

I smack a mosquito and splash my neck with someone else’s blood.

I twist and examine the copper splotches on the calf-section of my company khakis. Shoot! I tuck my branded spandex shirt back in and shudder as my fingers slip across the smear of mud across the pocketless seat of my pants. At least I don’t have a pocketful of the mud—first time I’ve been thankful that they order our uniforms unisex. Christ, Janice will be pissed.

I don’t even care that she’ll dock my pay—she loves to dock my pay; it’s that hypertensive, blood-pumping anxiety which makes my stomach drop into the bottomless pit which seems to open up within my pelvic floor whenever I know she’s making notes for the “development areas” on my next performance review. I am consistently rich in areas to develop.

I can hear already her snide comments about my filthy clothes and the smell of my cigar—ah! I shake the tension from my arms and from my fingers, shake the thoughts of Janice from my mind.

Water trickles across pillows of black algae slime and over the lip of a square tunnel that shoots beneath the parking lot. A faint glimmer of yellow green light bobs and flickers on the far side of the tunnel as I trace the rim of the putrid pond with careful, squishing steps. Robins and squirrels scatter before me as I walk.

My skin soaks warmth from the stone on which I recline beside the creek. My things are arrayed: glinting brass cigar clipper, box of matches to preserve the taste while I light, and a crisp little mini-corona Paradiso cigar, which last month’s Cigar Aficionado ranked #7 on its list of “Best 30-minute Lunchbreak Smokes.” I relish my process: the paper seal rips perfectly along the folded edge of the plastic wrapper; the cigar slips out easy; my fingers delicately squeeze its spongey firmness, and I observe English etiquette by carefully removing the red label. The latent unlit flavor fills my nasal cavity and lungs before dispersing into the air through a grinning exhalation. It takes a second to moisten in my mouth. Turns out the tobacco’s actually a bit drier than one would want it, but no matter, that might accelerate the smoke, which could work out just fine since I had squandered much more of my break than I’d intended and no longer had the thirty minutes that I needed.

Caw-caw-caw overhead and reflected below treetops in the pool.

The moistened end pops off with a satisfying snip. I rattle a match out of the box and pause before striking to peer into the square tunnel towards a strange tinkling harmonic music. The melody dissolves into the wind and the trickle of the creek. I return to the task at hand and rip flame from the air with two matchheads dragged across the abrasive strip. The fire swells and settles, and I angle the matches downwards to give the fire a path on which to grow.

I draw fire into the cigar and smoke into my mouth in easy pulses that match the rhythm of my blood and of my breath and of the churning clouds until my fingertips start burning and a satisfactory ember glows orange on the tip of my cigar.

“Ah.”

I exhale, and I sigh. I draw again and let a mouthful of creamy smoke drift upward in still air, where it gradually disperses towards the busy surface I escaped. I continue in this manner, relishing the taste and the aroma of tobacco which all but cover the rancid odors all around me. I feel manly and alright and attempt to raise my thoughts to higher things. I am a grotto king, alone in my domain and master of all that I can see.

What did the old ad campaign say? “Every Cigar is a Miniature Vacation.” That’s exactly right. I draw, release, let the smoke drift upward. I examine the ethereal shapes of smoke before another cool gust from the tunnel disperses it all into the background haze.

Buzz!

I feel vibrations in my pocket and squint through stinging smoke as I procure my phone from the pocket of my soiled khakis. Need me to come back early if I can? Screw you, Janice; I’m not coming back early. I have eighteen minutes left! You’ll be lucky if I come back at all. I have a mind to toss my phone into the pool. But I don’t. I mark the message unread and slip it back into my pocket, while I take the cigar from my mouth and catch my breath.

Tinkle-tinkle.

I look back into the tunnel. The far side light looks like it’s dancing. I try and fail to banish Janice from my mind and to remember I am king of this grotto. A conversation pulls my gaze up to the surface. I recognize those voices. Is that Rob? Is he taking a picture of me down here? I shudder and gather my things as I rise. My back aches. I try to relax for five minutes, and my back aches. Guarantee Rob waits for me up there. I make a plan to come up from the other side and be sitting at the counter before he’s back.

I look again into the tunnel.

Tinkle-tinkle.

What a marvelous sight on the far side: green-leafed limbs bouncing in daylight wind over the water—telescoped by a couple hundred yards of dark tunnel so that it all looks so pristine. My heart sinks as I survey the pollution and the rot around this pool. I bloody my scraped hands with another mosquito-smack. Can you catch AIDS that way? I bound from stone to stone across the pool and drink the acrid chemical odors once more into my lungs. My cigar smoke fades for want of enjoyment. An echoed plash greets my first step into the dark tunnel. Fear starts forming in my stomach. I enjoy several luxurious puffs to feed my cigar and look again toward the far side light. And with steeled resolve, I journey into the black with my cigar smoking in my teeth. The plashing echoes crescendo.

There’s no way to keep my loafers out of the inch of flowing water, but no matter, they’ve already been soaked. I bow my head to avoid scraping my scalp. My fingers drag across rough concrete, and I keep my eyes on the jagged light reflections in the ripples of the water, looking for snakes and other slithering beasts. Plash, plash, plash. The tinkling grows louder as I journey. It sounds like the handbells which they once played at church when I was little. All is completely black now, but I still see dancing light through the circular opening a hundred yards before me. I pause and look back toward whence I came, but there is nothing there to see: just an endless abyss of blackest black. Unless I raise my hands before me to catch the far side light, I can see nothing.

I turn again toward the far side. There’s a figure waiting at the mouth. Maybe the chemical haze has finally gotten to my mind. A beautiful woman—she looks a little younger than my sister—with impishly round eyes and a playful smile. Her blonde hair cascades over her shoulders. She wears a dress so fine and so white that it appears sewn of sunlight. She laughs while she walks barefoot in a field of greenest grass. Her steps keep time to an ethereal tinkling music from the trees.

“Hello,” I say and shield my eyes and step into unobstructed sun at the circular mouth of the tunnel. She doesn’t seem to hear me. I’ve never seen such beauty. The water sparkles over stones as it meanders through a forest to the tunnel. I extend my hand.

She meets my gaze briefly as she continues walking like some woodland nymph untroubled by the cares of mortal men.

“I didn’t know that any others would come down here,” I say. I watch her from where I stand. Cigar smoke collects inside my mouth and tendrils over my face.

Finally, she responds, almost absentmindedly—she’s not surprised to see me—and says, “This is where I live.” Then she’s laughing, as if my words are so preposterous.

“It seems a pretty place to live,” I say.

She smiles to herself but declines to humor my observation with a response.

The shadows on the rounded tunnel wall appear to writhe as something breaks apart from the concrete toward me. I stagger backward.

“Don’t be afraid,” says the nymph over my yelps.

I shrink before a twisted knot of undulating snakes that somehow retain the form of a hunched and haggard man. “What fee have you?” the warped creature hisses between the slick snakes which form a barely discernable, almost-stable body despite their constant motion.

“What fee?” I ask, confused.

“Aye—what fee?” The creature sways back and forth while the snakes that make up his body unceasingly wriggle. He takes a couple heavy steps across the tunnel towards me, and I fall onto the wet concrete floor where I huddle in fear.

“Who are you?” I ask. “What are you?”

“I am the troll,” he says. The far side sunlight now illumines the moving bodies of the snakes. Scales of gray and red and brown deaden the light.

The rounded walls push my shoulders forward into a hunch. I look away from the horrible face and towards the nymph.

She pauses—the tinkling music pauses too—and looks at me with a moderately sympathetic shrug. “He’s the troll,” she says. “You mustn’t think you can stiff the troll on his fee.” She admires a blossom.

“Aye. I’m owed my fee.” As the troll continues speaking half-revealed within the sunlight, I realize that the voice comes not from the mouth shape that moves with the uttered words, but from the countless jaws of the snakes themselves. The words hiss over flickering forked tongues between fangs and combine into a single haunting whisper.

I shudder at the realization and feel sweat seep cold through my skin.

The empty writhing serpentine eye sockets orient toward my shoes. “I’ll take those,” says the troll as he raises his arm in gesture toward my loafers.

“My shoes?” I stammer, trying as hard as I can to dissolve into the wall as the troll looms above me. I’m coughing over the smoke of my cigar.

“Nay,” says the troll, “I’ll take the treasure which you’ve hidden in your shoes.”

I look down at the patinated pennies stuck into the slots of my loafers. I had always made a habit of keeping them there—in spite of the androgynous aesthetic of the bank’s uniforms—as an impotently rebellious gesture toward the foppish dandyism I wish I could express. Images flash before my mind of Janice’s power suits and shoulder pads.

“Aye, give me the treasures,” says the troll as he bumbles over and reaches toward my shoes. I let loose a shriek and scramble toward the mouth of the tunnel. The troll grips me by the ankles in flexing, twisting, ophidian fingers. I lurch headfirst toward the sunlit clear water. Both hands flail before me. Psst—my lunchbreak cigar extinguishes on the surface with a puff of smoke. The loafers slip off easy from my feet. Bang! The cold water smacks me in the forehead and shocks me to my senses. I’m submerged in water so clear it almost makes no difference to my sight. Brilliant speckled and striped and rainbowed trout swim by and seem to nod their busy greetings on their way. Had they hats, they might have tipped them. I had no idea that trout were such polite creatures.

I accidentally breath water and feel my lungs about to burst. I plant my feet onto the pebbled creek floor and launch myself upward. My vision tunnels as I burst through the surface, coughing water and a little vomit from the back of my throat and gasping for air.

I start and shriek again at the troll staring down at me from the lip of the tunnel mouth. He’s wildly grinning with copper pennies in his writhing, otherwise empty, eye sockets. The nymph has fallen onto the grass, laughing the most beautiful laugh I’ve ever heard. Pure untroubled joy comes through that laugh—as if the world were a delightful story and there never had been anything to worry about.

She can’t control herself, she laughs so hard. And then she snorts—and I can’t help myself either—

Her merriment infects me, and I smile up at her from the middle of the creek. “I wouldn’t have thought nymphs snorted when they laughed,” I say.

She sits up and wipes tears from her ruddied cheeks. “I am no nymph,” she says through dwindling bursts of beautiful laughter.

“Are you sure?” I say, shivering but feeling totally at ease.

“I’m a daughter of Adam—no nymph.”

“What’s your name?”

“Evelyn,” she says, “after my mother.” She collects herself and stands.

“Where are you going?” I ask her as she turns around. She’s walking from the pool.

“To start climbing those mountains, of course.” She gestures toward blue mountains on the horizon. Trees obstruct the view, but I catch brief glimpses.

I step out of the pool and shiver in warm sun. I pat my pockets and realize that I must have lost my phone in the water. I briefly look around but realize that it’s drowned in any case. The troll jigs with his grinning penny eyes at the mouth of the tunnel. Evelyn laughs. Sunshine warms and dries my skin and hair, and the grass feels good on my bare feet.

Evelyn gestures toward a change of clothes hanging on the limb of an adolescent tulip poplar: shirt and leather jacket and blue jeans with back pockets and everything. I examine the garments before taking them behind a bush. I strip down to nothing.

“Are you coming with me?” asks Evelyn.

I hesitate and think thoughts of Rob and of performance review rankings and of Janice. After drying, for a minute, in the sun and gentle breeze, I dress.

“I may need your help,” she says. For modesty’s sake, she’s turned herself away from me.

“What could you possibly want with my help?” I ask her as I emerge.

She turns and smiles at me as if she’s almost kind of sad. “What a silly question,” she says.

“I don’t think I have time to climb that mountain,” I respond politely. “I’m afraid that I’ve got to return to work.”

Her sadness deepens, and she nods. I watch her fade white and blonde and dancing in the woods. I feel a weight of longing substantialize in my stomach. She disappears among the trees.

My head settles on a tuft of soft clover. Evelyn’s face forms in the clouds above me. The tinkling harmonic music swells as it takes shape. It’s a symphony of birds and wind and splashing water. I close my eyes and listen to the music for a while.

A hissing whisper echoes from the tunnel. “What fee have you?” I peek one eye open horizontally down my chest toward the troll and see the writhing snake form blocking the mouth of the tunnel. A shrill voice screams something in response.

Someone else? I rise up—my back feels good and my hands are healed—to take a look and think that I might welcome the next arrival to this place as Evelyn had welcomed me.

“I’m owed my fee,” the troll demands.

I can hear the shrill voice clearly now. “How about I don’t call the police about another vagrant junkie bum?” My heart sinks: I know that voice. A short woman, made broad-chested by the shoulder pads of her pantsuit, shoves the troll aside and steps into the light. “These parasitic homeless sucking the blood from productive society,” Janice mutters to herself and to the troll as she steps past him. Her heels click-clack on concrete loudly.

The troll has his face in his hands and he’s weeping on the lip of the tunnel mouth. He looks like a dirty young man now, with torn and soiled clothes and sores opening in his flesh.

“Hey!” she screams at me and points in my direction. “Where the hell have you been? When your supervisor texts you, you respond. I told you to get back early. And not only do you ignore me, but you’re down here…” She extends her arms and looks back and forth at the trees and creek and sky. “…in this dump.” She places her heeled steps carefully on stone after stone to cross the creek.

The troll continues weeping as he’s staring at the pennies in his palms.

Janice’s words spill like venom from her lipsticked snarl. “You better believe that I’ve recorded this and plan to put this in your next review.” She makes slow progress, but she’s closer now. I can see her narrowed eyes. “You are to return with me to work this instant.”

Terror grips my body. I have no words. I start trembling where I stand.

“Don’t you move a muscle,” she screams. Putrid rot billows out into the water from every rock on which she steps. The white bellies of dead trout bob upon the surface of the water. “I might call the police on you too while I’m at it.” She looks so awkward—and quite vulnerable—as she steps from stone to stone.

I can see anger and desperation on her face as she approaches. The face of Janice seems so inhuman and unreal after my few minutes near the peace and joy of Evelyn. I feel somehow braver. And then my terror settles into contempt. But only briefly, as my contempt transmutes into a sort of pity—almost a love for this poor creature who I suddenly realize is locked inside the same misery which I had always blamed on her. She’s not my captor; she’s my fellow inmate. I step towards her with a hand extended but retract it when she snarls.

I cannot help her yet. I watch her corrupt all that she touches. This woodland realm in which I had been freed to be a subject. I am no king here, and Janice needs the king of this place. She places one glinting black shoe upon the grass, and I see the green turn brown and gray.

“I quit,” I tell her. And I run into the woods.

“Don’t you run from me, you coward. You lazy, selfish coward.”

The symphony upsurges in the woods. She cannot follow me with her shoes on. The water drowns her awful screams. Something in my heart sympathetically harmonizes with the lamentations of the troll, and I join my breath and pulse into the music.

***

It doesn’t take me long to find her. She’s gone slowly on her journey up the mountain. “There is no rush,” she says. “There is much beauty to encounter on the mountain.”

I nod and try to catch her glinting bashful eyes. I think I know exactly what she means. A bluebird hovers over my shoulder and then bats away into the canopy above. The slope grows steeper, and I’m tired.

Evelyn sees me staring at my muddy feet and tells me not to worry. “They’ll get cleaned atop the mountain.”

I follow her upward beneath sublime cliffs and swaying trees. The yellow sunlight turns green beneath the leaves. We pause to cup sweet water from the bubbling creek into our hands and drink.

Evelyn says, “I’m happy that you joined me. It is good to make this trip together.”

A warmth and comfort as I’ve never felt flood my chest.

We walk for hours or days or weeks or months. Sometimes she gets tired, or the way gets hard, and I step before her to clear our path. But mostly I walk beside her or I follow, and eventually she even lets me hold her hand sometimes. We don’t make it to the top, but we get close and keep on walking.

The world warms, then cools, and the days grow short. After some time, while still ascending, I rest. It’s a chilly day. Rust-bellied robins dart manically here and there for worms.

“Come here, little friends,” I say.

I stretch out my arms to greet them. They squeak and peck the soil in their mad dash for wriggling flesh as yellow leaves eddy in the autumnal gusts.

They pause and turn their beaks as I whistle. I approach, arms outstretched on either side. The robins watch me come.

“I know you’re afraid,” I say. “But you don’t have to be.”

The birds quake in their suspicion. I see their fear and sigh. I approach no further. I sit on the cold earth and breathe the wind as it passes. I watch the birds—still frozen—and produce birdseed from the interior pocket of my leather jacket, which I then remove.

I smile up at the cold blue sky through remnant yellow leaves.

“Do you hear it?” I ask the birds.

One chirps.

I smile.

The birds cautiously approach my open palms. By the time the birds have perched upon my wrists and upon my fingertips, I’ve lain down upon the earth. I outstretch my arms and close my eyes and lie cruciform while the birds feast, the sun shines, and the wind pulses turbulent music overhead and all around.

The robins eat their fill and every seed is shelled—interior meat consumed—before I awaken at the feel of soft pressure on my neck and on my jaw.

I peer down my chest. A particularly rotund specimen nuzzles me with softly feathered skull.

I chuckle.

Another bird alights flapping upon my chest. A worm writhes in her beak as the bird skips closer and closer to my face.

I do my best to assume a serious composure of high etiquette. “No thank you, sister robin,” I say. “I’ve already had enough today.”

The bird shakes her head bewildered before flitting off to a sparsely yellowed limb to drop the meal down her gullet and then to sing a joyful song of praise in her piercing, clean soprano.

The birds flap away as I rise from the earth.

A red-headed woodpecker rattles a hole into a gnarled ash tree above. The robins start. And tense. And narrow their eyes at the intruder. But given that the floor remained theirs, they shrug and proceed to go about their business as before.

Then a squirrel digs!

A bluebird touches down!

Red housefinches and titmouses fill the air and earth!

“Friends! Friends!” I say as the robins jump screaming all around to protect their hard-won turf.

“There is much,” I tell them. “The world is made new. You don’t have to rave and fight.”

The robins don’t listen as they gallop and peck and shrip and bat the air with their wings.

“Let me show you,” I say. I bring an acorn to the squirrel who shoves it in bulging cheeks and scrambles into the canopy above. I offer more birdseed to the newcomers who perch on my arm and sing feast songs while they eat.

“Do you see?” I ask the robins.

The robins saw; and calmed; and popped around the clearing, warmed by the opening sun.

The birds thus placated, and I thus adorned with avian brilliant color, I walk to a spring, take a long drink, smell a late-blooming flower, and join the birds in their symphony of overflowing joy, giving thanks to the pulsing wind.

Then I see Evelyn, bundled against the chilling air, walking towards me in the trees.

About the Author

Andrew Steuer

is a speculative fiction writer whose work blurs the lines between myth and modernity. Drawing water from the wells of philosophy, theology, folklore, and myth, he crafts imaginative narratives that explore timeless themes. A native of Atlanta, Andrew studied at the University of Virginia and later left a career in consulting and finance to pursue writing and renewable energy entrepreneurship. His fiction has earned admiration from publishing insiders for its vision and insight, even as it challenges prevailing norms. When he's not writing or working, Andrew likes to run, have beers with his friends, and spend time with his wife. He has written several novels which he expects to publish over the coming years.

Andrew is a graduate of the

St. Basil Writers' Workshop

. Credit for the title of this short story goes to

Rianna Cohen

, his fellow Basilian!